Flashback ( PDFDrive )

halo of light up ahead.
“That’s from the gate, right?” Dex asked.
Sophie hoped so. But . . . it had a whitish hue.
“Fan out,” Keefe said under his breath. “We need to make Ruy trap
us one by one. Hopefully that’ll buy us a little time.”
“Ruy should be our prime target,” Wylie added as they all reached
for weapons. “He’s their safety net.”
Sophie knew he was right, and she told herself to aim for black
cloaks as she grabbed a throwing star. But as soon as she burst into
the clearing, all she could see was Alvar standing over by the gate’s
control panel, and . . . she let her weapon fly, holding her breath as it
arced perfectly toward the panel, hopefully hard enough to damage the
sensor and . . .
. . . it sparked off of a new force field that sprang up around Alvar.
Another force field trapped her a second later, and she threw
herself backward to avoid crashing into the shocking energy.
Only then did she take stock of her situation, and . . . it wasn’t good
news.
Her friends and Tarina were all snared under glowing domes of
their own—she didn’t know how Ruy could work so fast—and Sandor,
Grizel, Woltzer, Ro, and Lovise were trapped under another, looking
scratched and bruised.
Meanwhile, Gethen, Ruy, Vespera, and Umber were completely
unscathed as they stood in the safety of their own shield, waiting just
outside the gate.
And Alvar . . . he wasn’t standing by the panel empty-handed. He
was holding a bloody scrap of fabric that Sophie took a second to
recognize.